Happy Place

by Emily Henry

My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.

I knew the only thing more painful than being without him would be being together knowing I no longer truly had him.

I lived for those rare nights when everything clicked and we were all happy together, when they weren’t worried about anything and could just have fun.

He’s become my best friend the way the others did: bit by bit, sand passing through an hourglass so slowly, it’s impossible to pin down the moment it happens. When suddenly more of my heart belongs to him than doesn’t, and I know I’ll never get a single grain back.

I don’t think she’s ever totally understood why I find it easier to fulfill other people’s expectations than to set my own.

I feel a kind of breathless happy-sad. Like I’m missing this night before it’s even begun. Every time he offers me more of him, it gets harder not to have it all.

I am in that phase of love where you’re sure no two people have ever felt this way before.

One more deal I struck with a disinterested universe: If I’m good enough, I’ll be happy.

The relationship can change shape a thousand times, but you’re always going to be in my life.

Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.

All my life, I’ve let other voices creep in, and they’ve drowned out my own.

The irony of it all strikes me then: working so hard to earn their love and pride, and it’s brought me no closer to them. If anything, I think maybe it’s kept them at a distance.